On Jan. 25, about 200 immigrants living in Greece occupied a faculty building at Athens University Law School and declared a hunger strike until their demands are met. Another 100 undertook a similar action in the northern city of Thessaloniki. The migrants are mostly from the Maghreb countries of North Africa. They are demanding legal residence status and regularisation of working rights for all immigrants in the country.

The government and the capitalist media have presented the event as organised by Greek leftists, complaining about the occupation of university rooms for the strike.

On 31 January a state prosecutor summoned the rector of the law school and eight migrant activists from the solidarity committee, threatening the former with legal action on a charge of neglect of responsibility and the latter with involvement in people trafficking! Under threat of eviction by police the hunger strikers were pressured into moving into another building in the city centre where they now reside in much worse conditions. Nevertheless they are bravely continuing with their fast.

In response, the Greek solidarity committee released an open letter which reads;

"We proudly, voluntarily, and publicly inform you that the undersigned have… supported by any means possible these people and willingly accept all political and social responsibility that occurs from our ethical commitment to their struggle. We deny though any accusation related to ‘instigation’. The idea and execution of the hunger strike lies with the migrants…. However unimaginable this seems according to your racist stereotypes, non-Europeans are also able to critically and collectively organise their own political struggles."

During the last two years, Greece has been heavily criticised for failing to respect human rights and offer international protection to refugees. It is true that there has been a major increase in the number of migrants entering Greece and indeed all the states with a Mediterranean shoreline close to Africa and Asia. Many of these migrants would wish to move on in search of work in other European countries but the EU’s regulations obstruct this in every way possible.

The EU’s Dublin Agreements insist that migrants stay in the country of entry and indeed allow states in northern Europe to deport them back to countries like Greece. A huge network of camps for interning migrants has sprung up across the continent.

The latter’s asylum system has virtually collapsed, letting a backlog of more than 47,000 applications accumulate. Less than 0.3 percent of them have been offered the protection accorded them in International Law. It is vital that right across the European Union the Left and the workers movement expresses its support for the hunger strikers and for migrant organisations in their own countries campaigning for such rights.

• For the right of asylum to be granted to all fleeing persecution
• For the right of migrants to seek work anywhere in the EU
• For legalisation of all the “illegals” in the EU
• For full civic rights for migrants, up to and including citizenship if they desire it
• For full and equal access to social services, health and education for migrants and their children
• For working class unity and support for self-defence of migrants against attacks by far right racists and the state forces

See their blogsites
Athens
Thessaloniki (with english translations)

The statement
We are migrant men and women from all over Greece. We came here due to poverty, unemployment, wars and dictatorships. The multinational companies and their political servants did not leave another choice for us than risking 10 times our lives to arrive in Europe’s door.

The West that is depriving our countries while having much better living conditions is our only chance to live as humans. We came (either with regular entry or not) in Greece and we are working to support our families and ourselves. We live without dignity, in the darkness of illegality in order to benefit employers and state’s services from the harsh exploitation of our labor. We live from our sweat and with the dream, some day, to have equal rights with our Greek fellow workers.

During the last period our life has become even more unbearable. As salaries and pensions are cut and everything is getting more expensive, the migrants are presented as those to blame, as those whose are to blame for the abjection and harsh exploitation of Greek workers and small businessman. The propaganda of fascist and racist parties and groups is nowadays the official state discourse for issues of migration. The far right discourse is reproduced through media when they talk about us. The “proposals” of the far right are announced as governmental policies: the wall along the Evros (the river border with Turkey), floating detention centers and European army in the Aegean, repression in the cities, massive deportations. They want to convince Greek workers that, all in a sudden, we are a threat to them, that we are to blame for the unprecedented attack from their own government.

The answer to the lies and the cruelty has to be given now and it will come from us, from migrant men and women. We are going into the front line, with our own lives to stop this injustice. We ask the legalization of all migrant men and women, we ask for equal political and social rights and obligations with Greek workers. We ask from our Greek fellow workers, from every person suffering from exploitation to stand alongside us. We ask them to support our struggle. Not to let the lies, the injustice, the fascism and the autarchy of the political and economic elites to be dominant in their own places too; all these conditions that are dominant in our countries and led us to migrate, us and our children, in order to be able to live with dignity.

We don’t have another way to make our voices heard, to make you learn about our rights. Three hundred (300) of us will start a Hunger Strike in Athens and in Thessaloniki, in the 25th of January. We risk our lives, as, one way or another, this is no life for people with dignity. We prefer to die here rather our children to suffer what we have been through.

January 2011